Description of the Prior Art
Baby soothers in general and pacifiers in particular have been in common use for many years. It is well known that pacifiers ideally provide the most comfortable surface possible against which a baby can chew to relieve the discomfort which attends teething and to accommodate the sucking desire of children.
As a result, pacifiers are typically made of both soft and hard rubber and any other material which combines resistivity and resiliency to provide a surface best suited to relieve the discomfort of teething and to satisfy the sucking urge of children.
It has also been recognized that means should be provided on the pacifier to prevent the child using the pacifier from swallowing the pacifier. Recently, government regulations have been propounded to require a pacifier structure sufficent to inhibit ingestion by the baby of the pacifier. The prior art contains soft material pacifiers with extremely enlarged shields to inhibit ingestion by the baby and rigid shields disposed intermediately between the teething member and the handle which will not deform and thereby prevent swallowing. Enlarged handles have also been provided to prevent a child from swallowing the pacifier. One of the most common current pacifier designs is comprised of a shield, principally of rigid plastic such as polypropylene contoured in both noncircular and circular configurations. The current pacifiers provided with these rigid shields suffer from the defect that they are two-piece or three-piece configurations; i.e., the shield is one piece, the handle another piece the nipple and a third piece which must be secured together.
Thus, the design of a multipiece assembled pacifier facilitates pacifier disassembly as a result of agressive use by the child. In the disassembled state one or all of the elements can be swallowed by the child.